Black Cat Strut

[vovat]

Having a wife who has a fondness for black cats (we have two, Wally and Reagan), combined with Halloween approaching, I thought a post on the connection between black cats and witches would be appropriate. Conventional superstition has it that a black cat crossing your path is bad luck, but like most beliefs involving luck, there are a lot of local variations. It's traditional in the United Kingdom for black cats to be considered GOOD luck, and other cultures think it varies depending on which direction the cat is walking. Sailors also considered it lucky to have cats on board ships, and this superstition actually has a logical explanation, as they'd kill the rats. The Egyptian goddess Bast was often portrayed as a black cat, and while the general belief is that the Egyptians considered ALL cats to be sacred, I've seen some suggestions that black ones were particularly revered. There's a legend associated with King Charles I of England that he was tried and executed not long after his pet black cat died, implying that the cat itself was lucky.



So how did black cats come to be associated with evil, and with witches in particular? I don't think there's any one official explanation, but it seems to have something to do with the association of darkness with evil, which was particularly prevalent in medieval European Christianity. Cats are nocturnal, like owls and bats, and black cats have the misfortune of having dark fur as well. Felines also have a reputation of being sneaky, and of possessing psychic abilities, like being able to see ghosts. As such, it wasn't too much of a stretch for black cats to be considered the familiars of witches, and sometimes even alternate forms of the witches themselves. There were several periods in history of people killing black cats en masse due to their link to witchcraft, which could be why they're not as common nowadays. At least, most black cats I've seen are actually a really dark brown if you look at them in the right light, but maybe that was always the case. Incidentally, it's supposedly good luck to find a white hair on a black cat, and our vet says that all black cats have at least a few white hairs. Reagan has a rather large white spot on her front, so I guess she's especially lucky. {g}